Page 18 - Feb17TNT

Jet Transition
by Thomas P. Turner
Fast-Track or Step-Up?
For decades, the path to advancement in high-end personal or business aviation was clear: learn to fly in a simple, fixed-gear single-engine airplane. After a time check out in a high-performance piston airplane, that is, one with more than 200 horsepower, usually with a controllable-pitch
propeller. You’d probably earn your instrument rating in this airplane. Next, get into a light retractable- gear airplane and, after a few hundred hours, transition to a heavier retract. When the time (and your experience) was right, pick up your multi-engine rating in a low-horsepower light twin, and later move into a heavier piston twin. Only after all this experience you might consider turbine transition, into a turboprop twin. Several hundred or more hours of experience later, get your jet type rating.
But is that still the “right” way to get into today’s stable of light, single-pilot jets?
The industry is geared toward this “brand loyalty” progression. Cessna and Piper had products that took you from simple trainer to turboprops and, in the case of Cessna, into that destination light jet. A couple of decades later, at least for a while all Cessna products from its entry-level trainers to smaller Citation jets all featured nearly identical Garmin G1000 panels, a move made in part to make
it easier to move up through the model line. Other manufacturers didn’t cover the entire progression, but tried for those airplanes coming off their lines. For example, although Beechcraft never made a huge splash in the training market (it’s Musketeer/ Sierra/Duchess line tried, without success, to capture a major market share), in 1984 Beech redesigned the “heavy retract” Bonanza and twin- engine Baron with what its sales brochure called “turbine-style” panel gauges and engine controls, looking as close to the turboprop King Air panel as they could.
Surely this is the way to become qualified in a single-pilot jet: gain
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